Gene Simmons, frontman of the band KISS, is hardly impressed with the DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on GeneSimmons.com - and indirectly - SimmonsRecords.com. In fact, according to a news post made to his site yesterday, Gene is threatening legal action against the perpetrators, along with posting their names and pictures online. Here's the post as it appeared yesterday:

Some of you may have heard a few popcorn farts re: our sites being threatened by hackers.

Our legal team and the FBI have been on the case and we have found a few, shall we say "adventurous" young people, who feel they are above the law.

And, as stated in my MIPCOM speech, we will sue their pants off.

First, they will be punished.

Second, they might find their little butts in jail, right next to someone who's been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend.

We will soon be printing their names and pictures.

We will find you.

You cannot hide.

Stay tuned

First to clarify, the attack on GeneSimmons.com wasn't exactly a "hack" - rather it was a DDoS attack. In order for this type of attack to work, many computers have to connect simultaneously to the target website and barrage it with traffic (packets). If enough computers are part of the attack, the web server becomes overwhelmed and unresponsive. The attack on GeneSimmons.com was partially successful, taking the site offline intermittently until the attack ceased.

Proving those responsible behind a DDoS attack is difficult, if not impossible. The first step in their investigation is to gather the IP addresses that connected during the attack, and attempt to discern those taking part in the attack from those merely visiting. Additionally, it's possible that many of those taking part of a DoS attack have no knowledge they're even taking part of the attack, especially if botnets were utilized. Botnets are drone networks of computers taken over by the originating perpetrator, and put to work by continuously pinging the target web server. The goal of the investigation would be to find those originating the attack - a daunting task considering many members of Anonymous uses encryption and proxy servers to hide their identity.

The cyber wars continue, as the Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom was attacked by Anonymous yesterday. As of this writing, the site remains offline.

Update: Anonymous has caught wind of Gene Simmons' recent comments (see above) and have made GeneSimmons.com and SimmonsRecords.com an official target. As of this writing both sites are down.

the thing is that while people like Gene and the music industry hate p2p, I wonder if they didn't have a vested interest could they actually see that this is just the 21st century version of cassette tapes and kids copying off the radio.

I can understand both sides of the argument but it is a real shame that in this day and age that we haven't got a legal p2p client were both sides are happy. Virgin media UK have been trying to do this for a couple of years and the only company which seemed to be forward thinking was Universal.

I wish that all this energy could be put to good use rather than sue sue sue. After all this time nothing has changed from Napster, what a real real shame, the only people getting money in this sort of action are the lawyers, not the artists, producers etc. I'm sure that nothing will truly change except that both sides will continue to be pushed to opposite polls by extreme views and during this time the one thing that will evolve is technology. Its like watching a scifi move were someone tells the viewer that the war has been going on for 300 years. In the UK the DEA was said to have a requirement of new innovative services built into it yet despite being able to spend millions on lobbying we have not seen any evidence of any new services as of yet. Who would have thought?

Not everyone participating in the attack will be willing. The folk in the payback channel have botnets for christs sake. This is never gonna happen and Simmons is gonna get smashed off the net for this. Fooooool

trevaaar wrote:Oh shit, I hope he doesn't call the cyber police and the state police.

Is it me or has Gene Simmons lost ALL credibility, I meen I have a good friend who is a HUGE KISS fan, well was, I mean KISS havent done anything worth listening to for years, but doesnt it strike you any of you who actually remember when KISS were a HUGE band, on the cutting edge of the Rock and Roll world, putting up with all the Crap the PRMC, accusations of Satanism ect ect can you EVER imagine that Gene Simmons would turn out to be a whiney little turncoat, running to the AUTHORITIES LMAO

You can see it now, (To Paraphrase Arthur Brown) I AM THE GOD OF HELL FIRE, now FALL FOR MY IMAGE or i'll i'll run crying to my Mum!

Gene Simmons Grow some Fricking balls you whiney clapped out old cheese fart.

After 1977 I stopped buying KiSS Albums. Thankfully a friend had bought 'Rock and Roll Over' and after one listen I was of the opinion that they sucked hard.Sadly, Not everyone was of that opinion & now ,this is the demon we deal with.Tho... On the plus side... I think he's still Butt-Chapped that KiSS didn't make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as of yet.

What a whining PUNK.

-=EDIT=-It must really eat at him that Billy Joel was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 99

oh noes, now GeneSimmons.com is down.. what will i do? I don't think it can count as a denial of service attack if no one goes to the site in the first place

Anon should stick to attacking organizations and corporations, not well known musicians. Attacking Simmons could potentially generate public sympathy for those that are being attacked. It's one thing to hate the RIAA or lawyers who send out tons of lawsuit threats -- these people didn't do anything to create the work and are attempting to extort money from those who fileshare -- but it's something else entirely to start attacking the artists. Without the artists, there would be no works to pirate in the first place!

If there is a hell, and I go there, as soon as I get there I will be greeted by Satan himself, who will pull up in a Comcast van to install my internet. I will then proceed to spend the rest of eternity on a failing comcast-provided modem that I cannot for the life of me get rid of no matter how many times I call 1-800-COMCAST, spend 20 minutes on hold, and try to add the MAC address of the modem I bought myself to my account. My eternity will be comcastically fuxored...oh wait that's reality.

KISS bassist Gene Simmons - a man willing to parade around stages dressed up like "The Demon" while singing songs about sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll - isn't a man best known for the subtlety (or consistency) of his thought. In a 2007 interview, while explaining why file-sharing had killed music, Simmons said he wasn't going back into the studio because no one would pay for the tunes he creates. His very next sentence: "I will be putting out a Gene Simmons box set called Monster - a collection of 150 unreleased songs. KISS will have another box set of unreleased music in the next year."

But threatening the Internet vigilantes of Anonymous with prison rape might be a new low, even for Simmons. Unless, of course, Simmons' true genius is simply calling attention to himself; in that case, he succeeded again spectacularly this weekend. Anonymous repaid his comments with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that has taken Simmons' website offline.

What goes around, comes around. Bringing DDoS to the masses is a big no-no, every siteop knows that. It will backfire.

BitTorrent becoming militant (Pirate Party and gang), now criminal and soon will be labelled terrorist. It got nothing to do with filesharing and should never be embraced by p2pers. Torrent users are being used as sheep to serve shady people's agendas. Time will tell, it serves their own enemies well.

qshusto wrote:What goes around, comes around. Bringing DDoS to the masses is a big no-no, every siteop knows that. It will backfire.

BitTorrent becoming militant (Pirate Party and gang), now criminal and soon will be labelled terrorist. It got nothing to do with filesharing and should never be embraced by p2pers. Torrent users are being used as sheep to serve shady people's agendas. Time will tell, it serves their own enemies well.

Hi there Andrew.

Funny how you say that the use of applications designed to allow people to share will eventually label people 'terrorists'. Somewhat delusional, of course, but it's this time of nonsense that Operation Payback is protesting against. Operation Payback is standing up for freedom, getting the attention of those who have ignored us for so long and saying - WE KNOW WHAT YOU'RE UP TO, AND WE'RE NOT GOING TO STAND FOR IT.

"Shady people" - do you know what Anonymous even is? You're the one with the agenda here, bud. Anyone on the net can partake in any part of this protest under the guise of Anonymous, or not, whatever people choose.

Stand idle or fight to protect that which we hold dear (the internet, free sharing) - the choice is yours.

ACS:NEWS - Following, reporting and mocking the rise and continual fall of now notorious scam UK Law firm ACS:Law and its head crony Mr. Andrew Jonathan Crossley.